More About Corn Fairies

 

Corn Fairies are an invention of Carl Sandburg, renowned Mid-Western poet.  They appear in "The Rootabaga Stories," which is a collection of short, fairy-tale like stories for children, inspired by the every day magic of the Mid-West.  Specifically, they are from the story "How to Tell Corn Fairies if You See 'Em."

"Have you ever stood in Illinois or Iowa and watched the late summer wind or the early fall wind  running across a big cornfield?  It looks as if a big, long blanket were being spread out for dancers to come and dance on."  Well, corn fairies come and dance on those corn fields.  They sing and dance and make the corn grow.  They shoo away mice and crickets and nail down the corn in high winds so it doesn't blow away.

Corn fairies wear overalls, ("The reason they are proud is that they work so hard.  And the reason they work so hard is because they have overalls.") which they weave themselves from corn each year.  When corn fairies laugh, the laugh comes out of their mouths like a golden frost.  And you can tell where a corn fairy is from, because the corn fairies in each state have a different number of stitches in their overalls.  Some regional variances also have various accessories made of different kinds of flowers.

I don't often use folk tales or creatures that only appear in one source.  But here, I believe corn fairies (although specific) tie into a long tradition of fairies who aid in growing flowers or forests or crops.  Also, it feels as if the original short story (which has little plot outside of Carl Sandburg's daughters asking him how to identify corn fairies and him explaining) is set up as a jumping off point for other stories.  He presents a character and expects children to come up with their own stories about that character.  There's something in the question and answer format of the story (where he is clearly making things up as he goes along) that feels as if it's teaching his daughters how to create a story, how to add details, how to roll with it.  He has created a folk tale and would be not be upset when it takes hold and grows and bends.